19
People do not know the full answer of what they are because they are only what they are at the present moment, and at every moment of their existence, they
are something new. They are not created by finite, finished identity and they will never be such being.
45
They live today and they will live forever in the process of change. “The Sufi is the child of the moment”. Sufi lives in a constant awareness
that his self is nothing but what he is at the present moment.
46
1. A Brief Introduction to Sufism.
There is no love but for the First Friend
whose naked glory you hide under hundred of veils-Annemarie Schimmel
47
In order to approach Sufism, it is worth relaxing for a moment to bear in mind on the idea of mysticism as relat
ing to “something mysterious, not to be reached by ordinary means or by
“intellectual effort”, but by closing “the eyes” as
45
William C. Chittick Sufism a Beginner’s Guide Oxford: One World Publication, 2008, 61.
46
Ibid, 54-55.
47
Annemarie Schimmel 1922-2003 was a professor of comparative religion in Harvard University. She was a German orientalist, fascinated with the Muslim world and wrote extensively
on Islam and Sufism. She was also a much sought after lecturer who could lecture without a manuscript in German, English, Egypt, Turkish, or with manuscript in French, Arabic, Russia, and
Urdu. Her teaching post included Ankara University which gave her ‘obsession’ with Rumi, Bonn University, and Harvard University. Her classes on Sufism were well attended and her teaching
materials resulted in her most celebrated book Mystical Dimension of Islam. The book is considered classic in the field on Islamic mysticism.
She published more than 800 hundred books and essays and earned an impressive number of honorary doctorates, prizes, and medals during her academic life. Retiring from Harvard in 1992,
she came back to Germany and continued teaching and lecturing in Bonn University. In 1995 she received the
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Association, honoring “her achievement in generating East and West understanding.” Annemarie Scimmel died on January 26, 2003 of
complications following surgery. Summarized based on her biography on the website of the Harvard University http:www.news.harvard.edugazette200412.1631-mm.html.
20
the Greek myein root suggests.
48
The origin of Sufism can also be traced upon via the etymology of the Arabic word tasawwuf, referring to the action of being Sufi.
As Hujwiri, an eminent medieval scholar and authority on Sufism summaries his treatise on Sufism:
Some assert that the Sufi so called because he wears a woolen garment jāma-i şūf, or others that he is so called because he is in the first rank saff-
i awwal, others say it is because the Sufis claim to belong to the ashāb- i Şuffa the people of the Bench who gathered around the P
rophet’s mosque. Others, again, declare that the name is derived from şāfā purity.
49
Another definition is that the word Sufi is derived from the word suf, wool, and modern scholars have concluded that Sufi most likely original meaning is one
who wears wool.
50
Of their own origins, the Sufis themselves have this to say: Sufism is founded on eight qualities exemplified in eight apostles: the
generosity of Abraham, the acquiescence of Ishmael, the patience of Job, the symbolism of Zacharia, the strangerhood of John, the pilgrimhood of Jesus,
the wearing of wool by Moses, and the poverty of Muhammed.
51
Sufism or commonly recognized as generally accepted name for Islamic mysticism is a teaching about the different paths or methods human beings should
follow in order to get closer to God and eventually unite with Him. William Chittick states that Sufism is the universal manifestation of Islam, in which ‘man
48
Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam Chapell Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 1975, 3.
49
Al-Hujwiri Ali B. Uthman al Jullabi, The Kash al Mahjub; The Oldest Persian treatise on Sufism, Trans ed R.A. Nicholson Great Britain: Lowe Brydone, 1911, 30 qtd in Annemarie
Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam Chapell Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 1975, 14.
50
William C. Chittick, Sufism a Beginner’s Guide Oxford: One World Publication, 2008, 22.
51
Schimmel, 1975: 14-15.
21
transcends his ow n individual self and reaches God”.
52
Most Western scholars like William Stoddart think that Sufism is to Islam what Yoga is to Hinduism, Zen to
Buddhism, and mysticism to Christianity.
53
In Schimmel worlds Sufism is “an exteriorization of Islam, a personal experience of the central mystery of Islam,
that of tauhid “to declare that God is One.”
54
It is “the esoteric or inward bātin aspect of Islam, is to be distinguished from exoteric or “external” zāhir”.
55
Broadly, Sufism has been demarcated by scholars and commentators, traditional and contemporary, as sober and intoxicated.
56
The sober Sufism is characterized by the court
esy of a servant’s relationship with his Lord. Sobriety allows for clear differentiation between God and correlates with the absolute
distinction between Creator and creatures and is associated with wonderment, awe, contraction, and fear.
57
Sober Sufism tends to attract the more educated practitioners who are willing to devote long hours to study texts that are as hard as
the works on jurisprudence, Kalam, or philosophy. They discover their natural home in prose, which is perfectly suited for the theological abstraction and legal
analysis.
58
52
Chittick, The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi Indiana: World Wisdom, 2005, 9.
53
William Stoddart, Sufism- The Mystical Doctrines and Methods of Islam Wellingborough: Thorsons Publishers Limited, 1976, 19.
54
Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975, 17.
55
Titus Buckard, Introduction to Sufi Doctrine Indiana: World Wisdom, 2008, 3.
56
William Chittick, Sufism a Beginner’s Guide Oxford: One World Pulication, 2008, 34.
57
Ibid. 32.
58
Ibid. 33.
22
In contrast, the intoxicated Sufism is characterized by attaining the eternal source of all beauty and loves within themselves and tend to de-emphasize the
Sharia and declare union with God openly.
59
They see God in all things and lose the ability to discriminate between Him and His creation.
60
Intoxication is associated with expansion, hope, and intimacy with God. Intoxicated Sufism
celebrates God’s presence in the medium of poetry, which is ideally suited to describe the imaginal realm of unveiled, unitary knowledge.
61
Unlike sober Sufism, intoxicated rarely demonstrates interest in juridical issues or theological
debates. They see God in all things and lose the ability to discriminate between Him and creation.
62
The classic example of the contrast between two literary figures of high point in the Sufi tradition is Ibn
‘Arabi and Rumi. The former wrote voluminously in enormously erudite and exceedingly difficult Arabic prose and address
theoretical issues arises in Islamic thought and practice that only those most learned in Islamic sciences could hope to understand them. The later wrote over
70,000 verses of intoxicating-poetry in a language that any Persian speaking
59
William Chittick, Sufism: a Beginner’s Guide Oxford: One World Publication, 2008, 32.
60
This credo encourages dispute between Sufism and Orthodox Islam. The notion of the highest point in Sufism’s spirituality regarded as the greatest sin in Orthodox Islam. The most well known
story about the clash between these two polarities is the execution of Husayn Ibn Mansûr, known to fame as al Hallâj cotton-carder who once declared his union with God openly by his most
celebrated of all Sufi claims “ana Al- Haqq, I’m the Absolute Truth.” A claim that equivalent to “I’m God.” As a result, Hallaj was beheaded on 26 March 922. Despite of this occurrence, Hallaj’s
name, as Attar puts has become “a symbol of martyr of love, unitive experience, and a lover greatest sin to divulge the secret of his love. See Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of
Islam New York: Columbia UP, 1975: 62-68 and R.A. Nicholson, The Mystic of Islam Indiana: World Wisdom, 2002: 106-7.
61
Chittick, 2008, 32.
62
Chittick, 2008, 33.
23
Muslim could understand.
63
However, the contrast between these two writers should not suggest that Rumi was anti-rational or unlearned, or that Ibn
‘Arabi was not a lover and a poet.
Rumi and Ibn ‘Arabi are the model of human
perfection yielding differences in perspective and rhetorical means, despite a unity of purposes. Henry Corbin argues strongly that Rumi and Ibn
‘Arabi belongs to a similar group of fidèles d’ amour.
64
Sufism briefly is composed of mystic teachings and methods of gaining what is considered by Sufis to be true knowledge. It is at the same time a ‘way of
Love’ that leads to total unification with God.
65
Moving beyond the sharia or the Islamic Law, and focusing their attention on the tarīqa or the mystical path and
the haqīqa or the truth, the ultimate goal of Sufism is to be intimately re-united with the Divine Beloved.
66
The entire process of striving intimacy with the Divine Beloved involves the purification
of one’s character, both spiritually and morally. This refinement in Islam is known as the
basis of “greater holy war” and is characterized by struggling against
one’s nafs or carnal soul. This struggle can manifest in rituals of self-mortification and the dispelling of the bodily and worldly attachments.
67
The path or journey that man takes toward the union with God:
63
William C Chittick, Sufism: a Beginner’s Guide Oxford: One World Publication, 2008: 31-5.
64
Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn’Arabi London: Rouledge, 2007:70-1.
65
William Stoddart, Sufism-The Mystical Doctrines and Methods of Islam Wellingborough: Thorsons Publishers Limited, 1976, 48.
66
Eric Geoffrey, Introduction to Sufism: The Inner Path of Islam Indiana: World Wisdom, 2010, 14.
67
Ibid.11-12.
24
is “expressed by the portrayal of human-in-separation, in which the lovers
are “torn” apart from each other. The separation is characterized by a quest and a journey back to each other fraught with pain, agony, and intense
longing”.This state of affair symbolizes the consciousness of the human soul of its separation from its source God, and a yearning to return to it.
68
Therefore, most of widely known love romances and allegorical stories in Sufi poetry such as the tales of Laylâ and Majnûn, Yûsuf Joseph and Zulaykhâ,
the Moth and the Candle, the Nightingale and the Rose, are: Shadow-
pictures of the soul’s passionate longing to be reunited with God. The soul is likened to a moaning dove that has lost her mate; to a reed torn
from its bed and made into a flute whose plaintive music fills the eye with tears; to a falcon summoned by the fowler’s whistle to perch again upon his
wrist; to snow melting in the sun and mounting as vapor to the sky; to a frenzied camel swiftly plunging through the desert by night; to a caged
parrot, a fish on dry land, a pawn that seeks to become a king.
69
In Rumi words, this agony of longing is beautifully depicted in The Lament of the Reed, one of the best Sufi poems ever written:
Now listen to this reed- flute’s deep lament
About the heartache being apart has meant: Since from the reed-bed they uprooted me
My song’s expressed each human’s agony, A breast which separation’s split in two
Is what I seek, to share this pain with you: When kept from their true origin, all yearn
For union on the day they can return.
70
It is the account of the separation of the lover and the yearning to reunion personified as the ney, reed flute to use as a music instrument by being burned
through its core. That ney reed symbolizing human soul expresses the agony of separation from its root Divine Reality as well as its emotional longing to
68
Lalita Sinha, Unveiling the Garden of Love Mystical Symbolism in Layla MajnunGita Govinda Indiana: World Wisdom, 2008, 4.
69
Reynold. A. Nicholson, The Mystic of Islam Indiana: World Wisdom, 2002, 83.
70
Rumi, The Masnavi Book One, trans. Jawid Mojaddedi Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008, 4.
25
remedy the separation of the reed flute of his heart from his Beloved.
71
This poem reveals that the longing and emptiness we feel for a lost loved is only a reflection,
“a hologram, of the longing we feel for God; it is the longing we feel to become whole again, the longing to return to the root from which we were cut
”.
72
Thus Rumi’s classis poem, the Mathnavi, initiates with the lament of the reed that
“leads the reader into the complexities of human love and separation”.
73
Separation is “the human predicament: love is both the cause of, and the solution to, this predicament”.
74
In Sufism, the learning is passed on to disciples from a master. Thus, Sufism is
“an initiatory path where a master- disciple relationship enables the transmission of spiritual blessing
”.
75
The final goal of Sufism is to be united with God in paradoxical way as in Islamic tradition “there is no continuity of substance
between God and creation”.
76
Therefore Sufi ultimate aim is to vanish in God fana. It means that Sufis are:
removed from from the various temptations of the world, the initiate then knows the intoxication of immersion in the divine Presence. Being
completely unaware of himself as subject-consciousness, he becomes a mirror in which God contemplates Himself.
77
71
Shams-i Tabriz, Rumi’s Sun: The Teaching of Shams of Tabriz, trans. Refik Algam and Adam Helminski Canada: Morning Lights Press, 2008, viii.
72
Jonatan Star, Rumi in the Arms of Beloved London: Penguin Books, 2008, 18.
73
Rumi, Spiritual Verses, trans. Allan Williams London: Penguin Books, 2006: xvi-xvii.
74
Ibid. xvii.
75
Eric Geoffrey, Introduction to Sufism: The Inner Path of Islam Indiana: World Wisdom, 2010, 2.
76
Ibid. 14.
77
Ibid. 14.
26
2. The Mystical Stages of Union
